Many devices have been developed for the secure storage of currency. Typically such devices, referred to generally "safes", comprise a reinforced container having a lockable access door. Most safes are constructed of heavy gauge or hardened steel, although sometimes they may be constructed of other materials including concrete. Typically such safes have a single access door having either internal or heavily reinforced hinges and a sturdy locking mechanism; most often of the tumbler or combination type.
Safes or currency receiving devices of this type are useful for the secure storage of currency and valuable documents. However, they suffer from the inherent limitation that their access doors have to either be left open or continually opened and closed in situations where numerous deposits of currency are made over a short time span. For example, in applications in financial institutions where money is continually being deposited and must be securely stored, safes of the type described are overly cumbersome. Since numerous deposits of currency into the safe are made throughout the day, banking personnel often tend to leave the access door open rather than locking and unlocking the door each time a new deposit is to be made. As currency stored in a safe is only secure against unauthorized access, fire and other hazards when the door is securely locked, the situation as described is clearly undesirable.
In an attempt to overcome the limitations on the use of the standard safe, others have devised improvements that have met with varying degrees of success. One of the more common of such improvements involves the use of a mail-slot opening in the top or side of the safe. Such openings are structurally very similar to mail openings in doors that may be found on residential homes. These slots are sufficiently large to allow a bundle of currency to be inserted into the safe, but are sufficiently small to restrict the removal of currency through the opening.
A further improvement that has been employed is a variation of the mail-slot type structure. In this variation the safe, in addition to the normal access door, typically has a second opening on its top surface. Mounted over this opening is a revolving paddle-wheel type structure. In order to deposit the currency directly into the safe without opening the main access door, money is placed in the slot between two adjacent vanes in the revolving paddle-wheel. The wheel is then rotated until the slot containing the money corresponds with the opening in the top surface of the safe. At this point the money then falls from the slot into the interior portion of the safe. This improvement has the added advantage, over the mail-slot type opening, of preventing direct access to the contents of the safe through the opening on the upper surface.
The two improvements discussed, as well as variations suggested by others, all suffer from the inherent problem that the currency deposited through such secondary openings is randomly scattered throughout the interior of the safe. Accordingly, when it becomes time to empty the contents of the safe and transport them to either a larger holding facility or another location, the currency must be gathered up and put into some form of transferring receptacle. This process is time consuming and, the use of insecure transferring receptacles (which are most often cloth bags), exposes the currency to the risk of theft or damage from fire or other elements. Furthermore, currency may be lost or misplaced when being moved from the safe to a separate transferring receptacle.
Such devices also suffer from the problem of not having a precise and accurate account of the amount of money contained in the safe at any particular time. In order to keep track of the deposits made into the safe it is necessary for personnel making deposits to first count the money to be deposited and secondly to tabulate a record of each deposit. This procedure introduces the possibility of error through improper counting and through the failure of personnel to tabulate each and every deposit. The probability of error increases substantially in situations where numerous people are making a large number of deposits throughout the day. Each time the currency must be handled manually, the associated labour costs increase as does the potential for theft, damage, loss and calculation errors.